US President
Barack Obama
could be forgiven for wondering when cumulative foreign policy crises might ease, along with criticism of a “weak’’ foreign policy presidency.

However, events late this week have piled more pressures on a White House struggling to keep its head above the wreckage of a chaotic international environment.

The downing of a Malaysian airliner en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur which killed all on board – including at least 27 Australians – by pro-Russian rebels using Buk anti-aircraft missiles, if that proves to be the case, dramatically raises the stakes in the ongoing jostling over Russia’s responsibility for the dismemberment of Ukraine. Innocents have been slaughtered in mid-air, and whether by design or accident matters less.

The fact is Russian revanchism has destabilised a segment of Europe’s eastern flank with unpredictable consequences, as we have seen.

Related Quotes

Company Profile

Fallout from this outrage will almost certainly include an intensification of sanctions against Russia, ramped up this week, in any case, to include measures targeted against several of its largest companies and financial institutions, including energy giants Novatek and Rosneft, and finance houses Gazprombank and VEB.

Their access to US capital markets will be restricted.

Also on the sanctions list is Ukrainian separatist leader Aleksandr Borodai, along with a clutch of Russian oligarchs and political cronies of President
Vladimir Putin
.

If you were in the Oval Office this weekend gazing out on a world beset by multiple crises, you might ask yourself where to apply your energies.

The international environment has scarcely been more fractured – and more demanding of an American leadership fighting battles on many different fronts, including a pervasive view at home, and abroad, fair or not, that this is an ineffectual foreign policy presidency.

American polling is running against the president.

‘Worst president’

Indeed, the Obama administration vies for “worst president’’ status, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll, with the disastrous George W. Bush, whose mistakes contributed to undermining American authority. It was Obama’s misfortune to inherit a mess, with Iraq and Afghan war costs approaching $US2 trillion ($2.1 trillion), and counting.

The president’s multiple challenges include his pending decision this weekend to extend the life of nuclear negotiations with Iran, to forestall the day when a decision might have to be made to confront Teheran over its nuclear ambitions. The president also has on his plate Middle East destabilisation, including continuing fallout from Israel’s ground offensive against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, with its inevitable collateral damage, such as the deaths late this week from an Israeli air strike of young boys playing soccer on a beach.

This tragedy underscored the raw costs of the conflict, whatever the provocation.

Obama’s other challenges include concerns that a destabilised Middle East will erupt into a more generalised conflict with consequences for the US’s allies in places like Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

From an Australian perspective US distractions in Europe and the Middle East come at a particularly awkward moment, given growing China’s assertiveness in Asia-Pacific, Japan’s nationalistic response to China’s rise, and fears among Australia’s Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) neighbours of fallout from tensions between rising and status quo powers.

In an environment in which our security guarantor, namely the United States, is distracted, the last thing we need is the sort of unsteadiness displayed by Canberra in recent days in its management of relations with China.

Foreign Minister
Julie Bishop
would be advised not to confuse firmness in dealing with China with confrontational “China doesn’t respect weakness’’ remarks in a Fairfax interview, especially during a visit by a Japanese prime minister.

Diplomacy requires deftness and timing, neither qualities of which were present in the foreign minister’s responses.

All of this begs a question about the times in which we live, and the quality of leadership that prevails.

This is a subject of a timely new book – Maximalist: America in the World From Truman to Obama – by Stephen Sestanovich, Columbia University professor of international diplomacy former US diplomat.

Sestanovich concludes that whether presidents are “maximalist", as were Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush, or “retrenchers’’, as was Dwight Eisenhower and now Obama, old-fashioned geopolitics can overwhelm watershed moments historically, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Obama may have aspired to draw the United States back from foreign adventures whose cost is incalculable, but as he is finding, this is much easier said than done.

Tragic events like the downing of an airliner as a form of state-sponsored terrorism remind us just how challenging the international environment has become.